Beschreibung:

One officer, two surgeons, with an errant private. The company grade officer is ink signed I.P. Fall/Capt. 31st Me. Vols., by S.W. Sawyer, Bangor. Fall enlisted in Co. F, 32nd Maine 5/64; POW Petersburg 7/30/64; transferred to 31st Maine upon consolidation 12/64; paroled 3/1/65; m/o 7/15/65. Another officer in double breasted frock coat is ink signed beneath portrait, Yours Truly/J.D. Mitchell/Surgeon 31st Regt. Me. Vols. by Bogardus. Mitchell had prior service as Surgeon, 8th Maine and later resigned from the 31st Maine 9/6/64. Assistant Surgeon Richard R. Ricker, also by Bogardus, is identified in modern pencil. Ricker served in same capacity in the 23rd Maine, m/o 1/63. He joined the 31st Maine 3/64; discharged for disability 12/64. Private Cleaveland B. Merrill/Co. D 31st Maine Vols. is ink signed beneath vignette with H.L. Jackson, Lewiston imprint. Merrill joined Co. D, 32nd Maine 3/64; transferred to 31st Maine upon consolidation 12/64; m/o 7/15/65. 31st & 32nd Maine Infantries The 31st Maine was organized at Augusta and mustered in April 18, 1864. The regiment immediately proceeded to the front where it was assigned to the 9th Corps for Grant’s pending Overland Campaign. Within a few weeks, the 31st was heavily engaged in the burning Wilderness, suffering 18 killed and wounded in its baptism of fire. Not two months in service, the regiment was commended by General Griffin in Brigade Orders dated June 3, “for gallantry at the furious engagement at Bethesda Church,” where, wrote Griffin, the “31st Me. has made for itself a most brilliant record, and won for itself imperishable renown.” Throughout the hot summer of 1864—from Spotsylvania to the killing grounds before Petersburg— the 31st Maine and its sister formations engaged in a never-ending series of deliberate clashes, always pressing the enemy and moving forward in Grant’s carefully choreographed scheme of attrition designed to bleed the Army of Northern Virginia. By the time of the fearsome Mine Explosion at Petersburg on July 30—where the 31st was the first to enter the enemy’s works—the regiment had sustained 228 killed, wounded, and missing. The casualty count tempered somewhat by fall as the men entered the trenches. However, another 22 joined the casualty rolls after a brisk fight at Poplar Springs Church on September 30th before campaigning finally abated for the season. On April 2, 1865, the regiment cracked the Petersburg defenses as Richmond burned, losing 33 killed and wounded in a single day. The veteran 31st Maine marched in the Grand Review before mustering out July 15, 1865. In just twelve months of active service, 179 men had perished for the cause. The 32nd Maine was the last regiment raised by the state during the war. Only six companies had been mustered when they were hastily ordered to the front on April 20, 1864, to supplement Grant’s need for infantry. The incomplete regiment was then assigned to the 9th Corps, marching to catch up to its parent brigade somewhere in the Wilderness. The new recruits quickly came into range of Confederate musketry at Spotsylvania Court House on May 12, where the first batch of 36 men became casualties. The 32nd shared the fate of all infantry during the hellish summer, fighting and dying nearly every day in skirmish order or battle line, terrified but resolutely moving forward according to Grant’s mandate to overwhelm the shrinking Confederate Army. As the smoke and ringing ears cleared in the wake of the Mine Explosion at Petersburg on July 30th, the 32nd Maine joined its sister, the 31st, in the grand charge. Among the first to enter the utterly devastated enemy works, over 100 men were lost in the assault. Evening roll call revealed that only one officer and 26 enlisted men had emerged “present, fit for duty.” Somehow the 32nd renewed the fight at Poplar Springs Church on September 30th with another 26 culled from the rolls. Unceremoniously, on December 12, 1864, the 32nd Maine ceased to exist, as the survivi